Extra Credit Possibilities

(1) Find some small application of elementary physics, perhaps
in physiology, energy production or consumption, public health,
medicine, etc. It should draw upon only topics we have covered.
You should
point out how physics applies, and how it clarifies something about
this topic in some way, using only the simple kinds of arguments we are
learning to make, and it should include a quantitative estimate
Don't just find something on the web and appropriate it wholesale,
but of course you may use the web as a source of information. You should
present just one essential physical idea, clean and clear, and
perhaps very approximate, or even speculative -- that would
be fine. Write up
your idea in a clear exposition of maybe one page. I'll
make suggestions when I see it, and we will refine it.
Aim to make it something
you can present as a 5 minute topic for the class as a whole. The
presentation may not use computer projection -- that is, it must
be entirely your own exposition.
A good presentation will be worth an increment in grade.

(2) Make a comment or raise a question in class that takes us
in a new and productive direction. When you think you have done
this, write me an email message repeating the remark, and say
why you think it was productive. If I agree, I'll file it in
my extra credit folder. Two of these should be worth an increment
in grade. (But that's the limit -- i.e., you can't go on and
on adding increments, much as I want to encourage your questions.)
One additional point: be tolerant of your classmates'
raising questions! This is the whole point of what we are aiming
at, and you can't learn to do it just thinking about it and not
actually doing it.